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This Was Ranked America’s Top State for Business

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In an article published Tuesday, Texas governor Greg Abbott reacted to his state taking first place in CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business scorecard.

“To keep Texas the best state to build a business big or small, I will continue to implement a blueprint for a new era of economic expansion,” the governor said.

“Innovation and self-reliance are deeply rooted in the Lone Star State, and when freed from the stranglehold of over taxation and overregulation, new ideas flourish. By limiting senseless government restrictions, the opportunity to succeed in business is as limitless as the land itself.”

During an interview on January 19, Abbott told viewers, “Every CEO across the country when they move to the state of Texas I ask them the same thing, why are you coming to Texas? The first words out of their mouth is the same thing, and that is because you have the best workforce in America.” . . .

“The Texas economy is the fastest-growing in the nation,” Abbott said. “More Texans are working than ever before as the Lone Star State leads in private-sector job creation — over the month, over the year and over the past 10 years. And jobs in Texas are now on pace for the strongest growth in four years. This is not accidental.” (Read more from “This Was Ranked America’s Top State for Business” HERE)

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Are We Witnessing the Weirdest Moment in Economic History?

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It is an unfortunate reality that most people tend to be oblivious to massive sea changes in geopolitics and economics. You would think that these events would catch the immediate attention of everyone as they happen, but usually it is not until they realize that the microcosm of their personal lives is subject to the consequences of the macrocosm that they wake up and take notice.

There are, however, ways to train yourself to pick up on signals within the news cycle and within political and financial rhetoric; signals that indicate a great shift is perhaps on the way. Sometimes these initial signs are subtle, sometimes they are as subtle as a feminist slut-walk. I would point out that over the next few months there are dangerous correlations so numerous and blatant in the economic sphere that I would almost rather watch a marching gaggle of frumpy feminists wearing nothing but electrical tape than bear witness to the mayhem that is about to strike the unwitting public.

What am I talking about? Well, let’s go through the list…

Federal Reserve Meeting March 14-15th

As my readers know well, I have been warning since before the election that the Fed would use a Trump presidency as an opportunity to pull the plug on near-zero interest rates and remove a primary pillar supporting stock markets — stock buybacks made possible by free overnight loans to numerous banks and corporations. Without QE and low interest rates the equities bubble will inevitably implode.

Corporate earnings certainly aren’t holding up stocks, neither is GDP or consumer spending. The Fed is the only determining factor of the ongoing bull market. Anyone who claims otherwise is probably a mainstream analyst or overzealous day trader with a vested interest in keeping the illusion going.

It is not surprising to me at all that the “rate hike odds” for March have been increased by mainstream analysts to 90% in the span of a week. I don’t know why anyone uses these arbitrary odds as an indicator of anything. I’ve been receiving emails all month asking me if I still believe the Fed will hike rates while the odds are “so low.” Look, the Fed does not make decisions at these meetings. They make decisions months in advance and the meetings are window dressing.

Too many people operate under the delusion that the central bank wants to continue propping up stocks, which is why they cannot grasp why the Fed would raise rates. In reality, the stage has been perfectly set to allow the bubble to implode. When the elites have a perfect scapegoat, they use it, and conservative movements represent that perfect scapegoat today.

The important thing to remember, though, is the timing of this particular meeting…

U.S. Debt-Ceiling Suspension Ends March 15th

So, in case you weren’t tracking the economic situation two years ago, the U.S. government almost went bust (in a sense) in 2015. The debt ceiling sets limits on how much the government can borrow to fund itself, and that limit was hit hard under the Obama administration after he managed to nearly double the national debt during his tenure. Congress passed legislation to allow borrowing to continue until March 2017, and of course, much of that capital was “borrowed” from the Federal Reserve, which, of course, creates it out of thin air. With the return of the debt ceiling, the question is — will Congress be able to extend and delay again? With Trump running on a platform of fiscal responsibility, CAN they extend again? Do they even want to, or is this an engineered crisis event?

Once again, the timing of all this is a little odd. The Fed is raising rates into the first year of the Trump presidency leaving equities increasingly open to destabilization. In addition, the government might not be able to continue borrowing from them, or there will be a renewed extension but the costs of borrowing will run much higher. In either case, this month seems to pronounce the beginning of something; a considerable move away from the standard operating procedures that the elites have been using for the past several years. With such changes come consequences, always.

Formal Initiation Of Brexit On March 15th

The skeptics have been telling me for months that even though I was right about the Brexit vote victory the elites “would never allow” the British to leave the EU. Well, it doesn’t look that way to me so far. Theresa May plans to formally notify the EU of British exit on March 15th triggering two years of negotiations which will undoubtedly send economic shock waves throughout the globe on a regular basis.

Of course the Brexit will move forward! Why not? Globalists need a continuing atmosphere of crisis to distract the masses from their great global reset, and they need multiple scapegoats for the economic disaster that their reset will cause. Enter conservative movements in Europe; once again the perfect target to pin a crisis on.

French Elections Start April 23rd, End May 7th

Yet another election in which the EU hangs in the balance. Recent polls indicate that Marine Le Pen, the designated “populist” candidate, is falling behind. I have to ask, though, have we not learned our lesson yet on the meaninglessness of political polls? I think most of us have.

I believe Le Pen will be one of the final two candidates to move on to the election in May, and though I am not as certain as I was on Brexit and Trump, I am going to go ahead and predict a Le Pen win. If there is any sizable terrorist event in the next couple of months in the EU, or expanded Muslim riots, she is a guaranteed win. This brings up the very real prospect of a “Frexit” in the near future, and analysts should expect that a Le Pen win will be met with some panic in the financial world.

Potential Italian Election Move On April 30th

The Italian political process is a little confusing to me, but what I can tell you is that this spring or early summer you will probably be hearing a lot more about it. Former Italian prime minister and current Italian Democratic Party leader Matteo Renzi is set to decide on a the date for a leadership vote, which may come as early as April 30th. The outcome of this vote will likely decide how soon the next official Italian election will take place.

The election is required to be held before May 2018, but there is increasing pressure to hold elections in 2017, perhaps even this coming summer. I would not be at all shocked to see a surprise announcement of an early Italian election after the leadership vote is held.

Why should anyone care? The consensus is that Renzi’s party will be overrun by anti-EU factions and that this may result in a kind of “Italiexit.” The outcome of Italy’s series of votes and political restructuring will have wide reaching effects on the psychology of the markets for many months to come.

German Federal Election Held September 24th

Yes, even Germany is quaking this year in the wake of a potential “populist” tsunami. Angela Merkel is exceedingly unloved by her own people lately as her approval ratings collapse. Once-silent sovereignty champions in the country are becoming more and more vocal about Merkel’s rather insane open immigration policies which were the key element that drew millions of Muslims into the EU. It was the German government’s promise of endless entitlement programs that created the incentive for the mass migration in the first place, and now, finally, the German people are fed up with the complete lack of cultural assimilation and what many see as the destruction of Western values.

I do not think that Germany will abandon the supranational concept of the EU regardless of the outcome of the election, but the removal of Merkel would signal a less agreeable Germany, which would exacerbate the already tottering European Union. Meaning more economic uncertainty in 2017.

If You Thought 2016 Was Weird…

If you thought 2016 was weird, I suggest you get comfortable with the surreal because it is not going away anytime soon. 2017 is a veritable treasure trove of falling elevators, and I haven’t even covered half of the issues facing the economy this year. But what about the macro-analysis?

To summarize, it seems to me that many of these events, stacked so closely together, are not coincidental in their timing. As I have noted in articles such as “The Economic End Game Explained,” globalists have been openly planning for decades to set in motion a vast financial overhaul and the launch of a single global economy and currency (the seeds being planted starting in 2018). If this is still their timeline, then it would follow that they would need a series of fiscal earthquakes designed to shake up the “old world order” to make way for a “new world order.”

Perhaps each of these events will result in a “stable” outcome and there is nothing to be concerned about. That said, I don’t believe in chance. Most geopolitical outcomes are influenced by internationalist players, which makes the outcomes of these events predictable. This is what made the Brexit predictable, and it is what made Trump’s victory predictable. Everything about the confluence of political and economic events in 2017 suggests to me a festering crisis atmosphere.

As I have always said, economic collapse is a process, not a singular moment in time. This process lulls the masses into complacency. You can show them warning sign after warning sign, but most of them have no concept of what a collapse is. They are waiting for a cinematic moment of revelation, a financial explosion, when really, the whole disaster is happening in slow motion right under their noses. Economies do not explode, they drown as the water rises one inch at a time. (For more from the author of “Are We Witnessing the Weirdest Moment in Economic History?” please click HERE)

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Barron’s: Federal Deficit Is Set ‘to Explode’

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Be warned: The steady stream of federal red ink is getting to be a deeper shade of crimson.

As increases in annual U.S. budget gap add to national debt, blunt prospects for economic growth, and bode badly for America’s financial future, Barron’s reports.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently revised its projections for the U.S. budget in a report that began with an alert that, in fiscal year 2016, the budget deficit will grow, relative to the economy, for the first time since 2009. In dollar terms, that’s about a $590 billion annual gap, $152 billion wider than last year’s.

“In short, the federal budget deficit is about to explode,” David Ader, a government-bond strategist at Greenwich Capital, RBS, and most recently, CRT, wrote for Barron’s.

The agency projected that the debt held by the public will rise 3 percentage points to 77 percent of U.S. gross domestic product by the end of fiscal year 2016 this month, the Washington Examiner reported. (Read more from “Barron’s: Federal Deficit Is Set ‘to Explode'” HERE)

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A 12-Step Plan for Global Economic Freedom

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In the decades since The Heritage Foundation began publishing its annual Index of Economic Freedom in 1995, the world has witnessed profound advances in economic freedom.

Open economies have led the world in a startling burst of innovation and economic growth, and political authorities have found themselves increasingly held accountable by those they govern.

Unfortunately, the United States has drifted downward in the index rankings—propelled by reckless government spending that has spiraled out of control and led to unprecedented budget deficits. The long U.S. slide has been marked by stagnant economic expansion and extremely sluggish employment growth.

So, in this important election year, The Heritage Foundation has dedicated its annual “Global Agenda for Economic Freedom” to a detailed examination of ways to improve Americans’ economic freedom and America’s positive impact on the global economy.

Here are 12 steps the next U.S. president can take in 2017 for more economic freedom in America and the rest of the world:

1. American workers and consumers have benefitted from international trade, but global barriers to the free flow of goods and services and investment (e.g. nontariff barriers and nontransparent investment regimes) grew under President Barack Obama. The next administration must promote economic freedom by reducing them and opening new markets.

2. China faces huge economic challenges that, if unaddressed, will drag down the global economy. As a start, the next U.S. president should push China’s leadership to sign a bilateral investment agreement to make doing business there easier.

3. The price and availability of one of the most important production inputs—energy—will benefit from further liberalization of American and global energy markets.

4. Export financing subsidies from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and elsewhere are unnecessary and distort the U.S. and global economies. The Export-Import Bank should be shut down.

5. American economic growth will be enhanced by better, U.S.-led international policy coordination. The next president should downgrade the ineffective G-20 process and create a new, informal G-9 group of the world’s top nine economies.

6. The International Monetary Fund was created to bring stability to the international financial system. The IMF must return to basics by promoting rules-based monetary policies instead of bailing out countries that fail to follow those rules.

7. Many countries’ economic freedom scores would be substantially higher if not for the prevalence of government corruption. The next administration should make the fight against corruption a key component of U.S. development assistance programs.

8. The next president should evaluate all foreign aid programs for effectiveness and insist Congress update the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to put the United States Agency for International Development directly under State Department control.

9. Massively subsidized state-owned enterprises are a main factor restraining development. The next president should review U.S. state-owned enterprises, remove the U.S. government from activities best left to the private sector, and push other countries to do likewise.

10. The next president must confront rogue states pursuing deliberately harmful policies that threaten global security and commerce by creating a sanctions strategy that targets troublemakers and prioritizes reforms that enhance economic freedom.

11. Climate change policies are another area where government decisions have created opportunities for rent-seeking cronyism and have harmed economic growth while doing nothing that actually affects global temperatures. The next administration should take immediate action to withdraw from the redistributionist and ineffective United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and end U.S. payments to the U.N. Green Climate Fund.

12. Government-sponsored corporate socialist cronyism, often under the guise of promoting corporate social responsibility, increased greatly under Obama. The next president must assess the risks of cronyism-related CSR rent-seeking and end federal “corporate excellence” awards, “green” tax credits, “public-private partnerships,” and all other forms of corporate welfare.

The revitalizing policies in the “2017 Global Agenda for Economic Freedom” will create good, new jobs for Americans and a freer flow of capital, goods, services, and ideas around the world. (For more from the author of “A 12-Step Plan for Global Economic Freedom” please click HERE)

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July’s Strong Job Numbers Aren’t Strong Enough

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Today, the government announced that the economy expanded by 255,000 jobs. The news reinforces last month’s solid job numbers, which showed the economy grew by nearly 300,000 new jobs.

But employment numbers don’t tell the full story; the government makes sure of that.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the employment report each month, which lays out exactly what’s happening in the economy. In today’s report, they write: “Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 255,000 in July.”

But, further in that report, they write, “The unemployment rate held at 4.9 percent in July, and the number of unemployed persons was essentially unchanged at 7.8 million. Both measures have shown little movement, on net, since August of last year.”

Ok, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. In June, there were 7.783 million unemployed people. In July, apparently, there were 7.770 million unemployed people. Fourth grade math is really all that is needed to see that something appears wrong.

How can the economy add 255,000 new jobs, yet, the number of persons unemployed in the economy only drops by 13,000?

There are a number of reasons for this discrepancy. While the number of jobs may be increasing, the number of people looking for jobs is growing even faster. Individuals who are entering the job hunt may include those who lost a job but who became so disgruntled with Obama’s failed economics that they left the workforce altogether.

Other factors simply include a growing population that is coming of age and need employment. For example, while the economy added 255,000 new jobs, the number of people looking for work increased by 407,000. So while 255,000 seems to be good, it’s just not quite good enough.

Obama will run around the country touting 255,000 new jobs, and in particular, an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent that is in line with pre-financial crisis levels. What he won’t tell the American public, however, is that there still remains nearly 1 million more people unemployed than pre-2008. (For more from the author of “July’s Strong Job Numbers Aren’t Strong Enough” please click HERE)

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Painful to Watch: This Is the Weakest U.S. Economic ‘Recovery’ Since 1949

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Most of us have never witnessed an economic “recovery” this bad. As you will see below, the average rate of economic growth since the last recession has been the lowest for any “recovery” in at least 67 years. And unfortunately, the economy appears to be slowing down even more here in 2016. On Friday, I talked about how the U.S. economy grew at a painfully slow rate of just 1.2 percent in the second quarter after only growing 0.8 percent during the first quarter. And last week we also learned that the homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest level ever. This is not what a recovery looks like. Instead, it very much appears that a new economic downturn has already begun.

But don’t just take my word for how painful this economic “recovery” has been. The following comes from a Wall Street Journal article that was just posted entitled “Seven Years Later, Recovery Remains the Weakest of the Post-World War II Era“…

Even seven years after the recession ended, the current stretch of economic gains has yielded less growth than much shorter business cycles.

In terms of average annual growth, the pace of this expansion has been by far the weakest of any since 1949. (And for which we have quarterly data.) The economy has grown at a 2.1% annual rate since the U.S. recovery began in mid-2009, according to gross-domestic-product data the Commerce Department released Friday.

The prior expansion, from 2001 through 2007, was the only other business cycle of the past 11 when the economy didn’t grow at least 3% a year, on average.

This entire seven year stretch has come while Barack Obama has been in the White House. After more than seven and a half years, he is solidly on track to be the only president in U.S. history to never have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by at least three percent.

And unlike many presidents, he has had two terms in which to try to accomplish that feat.

One of the industries that had been doing fairly well during this recovery was the auto industry, but now in early 2016 they have found themselves struggling too…

Now, the auto sector, which has propped up GDP growth for years, is slowing down. For the first six months, total car and light truck sales, at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 17.5 million vehicles, are lagging behind last year by 100,000 units. Over the first half, fleet sales to rent-a-car companies and big fleet buyers were up industry wide. But retail sales fell 2%.

All over the corporate world, earnings are down.

In some cases, they are way down.

It is being projected that this will be the fifth quarter in a row when corporate earnings have declined, and even mainstream analysts are now admitting that it is “evident” that we have entered “a global slowdown”…

“Earnings season in the U.S. confirms the overall macro picture that we have. We have a global slowdown. It’s evident in all of the major economies,” said Peter Garnry, head of equity strategy at Saxo Bank, on a Bloomberg podcast.

Of course I have been saying this exact thing for the past 12 months, but a lot of people have tuned me out because the stock market in the United States has been doing so well.

But the stock market is not an accurate barometer for the real economy. It never has been, and it never will be.

If stocks accurately reflected the health of the U.S. economy, they would have already crashed really hard a long time ago. At this moment, stock prices are completely disconnected from economic reality, and this has many of the most respected names on Wall Street scratching their heads. One of them is Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital. Just check out what he told Reuters on Friday…

Noting the recent run-up in the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index while economic growth remains weak and corporate earnings are stagnant, Gundlach said stock investors have entered a “world of uber complacency.”

The S&P 500 on Friday touched an all-time high of 2,177.09, while the government reported that U.S. gross domestic product in the second quarter grew at a meager 1.2 percent rate.

“The artist Christopher Wool has a word painting, ‘Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids.’ That’s exactly how I feel – sell everything. Nothing here looks good,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview. “The stock markets should be down massively but investors seem to have been hypnotized that nothing can go wrong.”

If you follow Gundlach, you probably already know that he has been dead on accurate with regard to the financial markets over the past couple of years.

So when he says that the stock market “should be down massively” and that it is time to “sell everything”, we should all take him very, very seriously.

All throughout history, a huge decline in corporate earnings has almost always resulted in a huge decline in stock prices. As Jesse Felder has noted, “we have never seen a decline in earnings of this magnitude without at least a 20% fall in stock prices” during the last 50 years.

To any rational observer, it is quite obvious that stock prices should have already started collapsing quite some time ago.

And to a large extent this has already happened around the planet, but here in the United States stocks continue to defy the laws of economics.

But at this point it isn’t going to do much good to warn people about this. Those that could see the danger coming have already pulled their money out of stocks, and most of those that want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that things are somehow going to be different this time are not likely to be persuaded this late in the game.

In the end, we should all be grateful that this absurd financial bubble has lasted for as long as it has, because stability is much more pleasant than instability. The U.S. economy and the U.S. financial system have enjoyed a prolonged period of stability that has defied all the odds, and let us hope that it lasts for at least a little while longer… (For more from the author of “Painful to Watch: This Is the Weakest U.S. Economic ‘Recovery’ Since 1949” please click HERE)

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U.S. Post-Recession Economic Growth at 70-Year Low

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President Barack Obama has spent much of 2016 making sure his legacy on immigration, health care, LGBT priorities and the economy will be remembered. The first three history will remember, though possibly not for the reasons he hopes. But his legacy on the economy may not be quite what he was hoping it would be.

According to an analysis from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), America’s economy is growing at the slowest post-recession rate since just after World War II. Congress’ research arm noted that “Although this expansion is already the fourth longest since the 1850s (34 quarters to date), the slow pace of economic growth means the overall gains have been relatively small. … Real GDP has grown at an average pace of 2.0% per year during the current recovery, compared with an average rate of 4.3% during the previous 10 expansions.”

The Slow-Growing Economy

CRS compared economic growth under Obama to that which happened under President Ronald Reagan, both who came into office under tough economic conditions. “[T]he recession beginning in 1980 was also particularly long and severe and the economy grew very quickly after entering its recovery.” After the same amount of time, real GDP has grown by only 10%, while it grew over 30% under Reagan.

Where blame lies for the slow-growing economy is less clear, according to CRS. The non-partisan research arm of Congress pointed to several popular theories. Among them:

Financial-caused recessions may lead to slower recoveries than other recessions

The Great Recession’s high unemployment and high rates of long periods of unemployment may have atrophied the skills of workers

The Federal Reserve’s extremely low interest rates have discouraged investment

America’s recoveries may be slowing, overall — each of the last four economic growth periods has been smaller than the one before it. Blame under this theory has been laid at the feet of “an aging population, a slowdown in educational attainment, increased inequality, and a high debt to GDP ratio,” says CRS

Hedge fund manager and Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff believes Federal Reserve policy bears responsibility for the slow growth, reports The Washington Free Beacon. “This ‘recovery,’ if you want to call it that, is far weaker than prior recoveries because it is wholly artificial,” Schiff said. “It has been manufactured by Federal Reserve stimulus in the form of quantitative easing and zero percent interest rates.”

“I expect that we will have very low growth, or even negative growth as long as the Fed continues to ‘stimulate’ the economy,” he continued. “Frankly, I do not believe we have achieved even 2 percent growth over the last five or six years. The only reason we can even get GDP at that level is because the Fed has used extremely low inflation estimates, far below 1 percent. If they admitted inflation was higher, growth would have been reported even lower.”

Obama’s Victory Lap, And Bad News

For his part, Obama took a victory lap in Elkhart, Indiana, in late spring, praising the policies of his administration for economic improvements since 2009 in the local and national economies. However, economist Veronique de Rugy says blame for slow growth falls on some of those same policies.

“[T]he last eight years have been really awful for the labor market, whether it’s through Obamacare, the increase in the minimum wage, uncertainty in the market,” said de Rugy. “Uncertainty means paralysis. Making the cost of low-income labor more expensive isn’t helping.”

The CRS report is just the latest bad economic news in recent months. In June, Federal Reserve Chairperson Janet Yellen told Congress that the unemployment is artificially low because people are not looking for work.

“The unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent in May, but that decline mainly occurred because fewer people reported that they were actively seeking work,” Yellen told Senators on the Banking, House, and Urban Affairs Committee. “A broader measure of labor market slack that includes workers marginally attached to the workforce and those working part-time who would prefer full-time work was unchanged in May and remains above its level prior to the recession.”

Additionally, an analysis of economic data from the federal Bureau of Labor & Statistics (BLS) found that U.S. productivity growth is at its lowest five-year rate since 1947. (For more from the author of “U.S. Post-Recession Economic Growth at 70-Year Low” please click HERE)

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Top Economist Makes Case for Why New Laws Are Destroying Jobs

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A former top federal economist warned in an opinion piece Wednesday government policies are often counterproductive to the jobs they’re meant to save.

Industries phase out employment opportunities naturally due to factors like robotics and automation. Lawmakers have proposed policies to preserve and improve jobs, but often, those ideas backfire. International Trade Commission Former Chief Economist Peter Morici said a better approach is to prepare people for the jobs not easily replaced.

“The robotics and artificial intelligence revolution is all around us,” Morici wrote in a piece for Fox News. “Tasks requiring complex manual dexterity have proven tougher to replace but automated checkouts are spreading, and robots are at the cusp of not just taking orders at McDonald’s but also grasping and handing you hamburgers, fries and soft drinks.”

Morici notes economic innovation has been a part of human development since man first discovered the wheel. Industries advance and find ways to complete tasks without humans. He said with the new wave of automation, policymakers should be weary of the unintended consequences of preserving easily automated jobs.

“The Obama administration promised thousands of new jobs from the 2012 Korean-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, but it boosted the trade deficit by $16 billion and unemployment by 130,000,” Morici continued. “The Affordable Care Act, mandatory overtime and higher minimum wages imposed by many states and cities raise the cost of employing Americans, compelling businesses to purchase labor saving devices more quickly or close.”

Democrats and unions have made raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour a popular political issue. The policy is designed to improve the working situation for low-wage employees, but it could increase the rate employers turn to automation. Morici said the solution is to completely readdress how we approach education, so people know more complex skills.

“Our high schools and colleges are better at preaching social justice than producing enough graduates who can do the complex cognitive work that machines still leave to human beings,” Morici explained. “Skilled technicians with a year or two training and graduate engineers and systems analysts remain too scarce.”

Other economists have also concluded automation is a natural course of action as the economy evolves. The White House Council of Economic Advisers said in a report Feb. 22 that technological innovations like automation are on the rise. The question is whether increases in the minimum wage and other policies will actually cause automation to occur at a faster rate. (For more from the author of “Top Economist Makes Case for Why New Laws Are Destroying Jobs” please click HERE)

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19 Facts That Prove Things in America Are Worse Than They Were Six Months Ago

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Has the U.S. economy gotten better over the past six months or has it gotten worse? In this article, you will find solid proof that the U.S. economy has continued to get worse over the past six months. Unfortunately, most people seem to think that since the stock market has rebounded significantly in recent weeks that everything must be okay, but of course that is not true at all. If you look at a chart of the Dow, a very ominous head and shoulders pattern is forming, and all of the economic fundamentals are screaming that big trouble is ahead. When Donald Trump told the Washington Post that we are heading for a “very massive recession“, he wasn’t just making stuff up. We are already seeing lots of things happen that never take place outside of a recession, and the U.S. economy has already been sliding downhill fairly rapidly over the past several months. With all that being said, the following are 19 facts that prove things in America are worse than they were six months ago…

#1 U.S. factory orders have now declined on a year over year basis for 16 months in a row. As Zero Hedge has noted, in the post-World War II era this has never happened outside of a recession…

In 60 years, the US economy has not suffered a 16-month continuous YoY drop in Factory orders without being in recession. Moments ago the Department of Commerce confirmed that this is precisely what the US economy did, when factory orders not only dropped for the 16th consecutive month Y/Y, after declining 1.7% from last month

#2 Factory orders have now reached the lowest level that we have seen since the summer of 2011.

#3 It is being projected that corporate earnings will be down 8.5 percent for the first quarter of 2016 compared to one year ago. This will be the fourth quarter in a row that we have seen year over year declines, and the last time that happened was during the last recession.

#4 Total business sales have fallen 5 percent since the peak in mid-2014.

#5 S&P 500 earnings have now fallen a total of 18.5 percent from their peak in late 2014.

#6 Corporate debt defaults have soared to the highest level that we have seen since 2009.

#7 The average rating on U.S. corporate debt has fallen to “BB”, which is lower than it has been at any point since the last financial crisis.

#8 The U.S. oil rig count just hit a 41 year low.

#9 51 oil and gas drillers in North America have filed for bankruptcy since the beginning of last year, and according to CNN we could be on the verge of seeing the biggest one yet…

Shale oil driller SandRidge Energy (SD) warned there was “substantial doubt” it would survive the oil downturn. The Oklahoma City company said this week it is exploring a potential Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Based on its $3.6 billion of debt, SandRidge would be the biggest North American oil-focused company to go bust during the current downturn, according to a CNNMoney analysis of stats compiled by law firm Haynes and Boone.

#10 According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, job cut announcements by major firms in the United States were up 32 percent during the first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter of 2015.

#11 Consumers in the United States accumulated more new credit card debt during the 4th quarter of 2015 than they did during the entire years of 2009, 2010 and 2011 combined.

#12 Existing home sales in the U.S. were down 7.1 percent during the month of February, and this was the biggest decline that we have witnessed in six years.

#13 Subprime auto loan delinquencies have hit their highest level since the last recession.

#14 The Restaurant Performance Index in the U.S. recently dropped to the lowest level that we have seen since 2008.

#15 Major retailers all over the country are shutting down hundreds of stores as the “retail apocalypse” accelerates.

#16 If you take the number of working age Americans that are officially unemployed (8.1 million) and add that number to the number of working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” (93.9 million), that gives us a grand total of 102 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now

#17 Since peaking during the 3rd quarter of 2014, U.S. exports of goods and services have been steadily declining. This is something that we never see outside of a recession…

#18 The cost of everything related to medical care just continues to skyrocket even though our wages are stagnating. According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year, and yet the cost of medical care just hit a brand new all-time high…

#19 Our government debt continues to spiral out of control. At this point it is sitting at a staggering total of $19,218,516,838,306.52, but when Barack Obama first entered the White House it was only 10.6 trillion dollars. That means that our government has been stealing an average of more than 100 million dollars an hour from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day since Barack Obama was inaugurated…

How in the world can anyone look at those numbers and suggest that everything is okay?

I simply do not understand how that could be possible.

Part of the problem is that Americans have been trained to be irrationally optimistic. It is fine to have an optimistic outlook on life, but when it causes you to throw logic and reason out the window that is not good.

For example, you can be “optimistic” about your ability to fly all you want, but if you step off a 10 story building you are going to take a very hard fall to the ground.

Similarly, you can ignore all of the facts and pretend that our economic prosperity is sustainable all you want, but it won’t change the fundamental laws of economics.

On a personal note, I would like to thank everyone that has helped make my new book the #1 new release in Christian eschatology on Amazon.com. I understand that a lot of my secular readers are not going to understand my fascination with Bible prophecy, and that is okay. I felt that I needed to write this book to address some very serious errors that are being taught in churches all over America today, and I also wanted to inspire believers to face the great hardships and persecution that are coming.

Just because very difficult times are approaching does not mean that it will be time to run and hide. My wife and I always live our lives with no fear, and when things get crazy we believe that it will be an opportunity to do even more good. We believe that the greatest chapters of our lives are still ahead of us, and we want people to understand why they can look forward to the future even though great darkness is rising all around us.

So yes, I definitely carry a message of warning.

But I also bring a message of hope.

As we look toward the future, there is much to be concerned about, but there are also things happening that are worth getting extremely excited about.

It is when times are the darkest that the light is needed the most, and very soon light will be greatly, greatly needed in the United States of America. (For more from the author of “19 Facts That Prove Things in America Are Worse Than They Were Six Months Ago” please click HERE)

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Republicans Are Addicted to Increasing Federal Spending

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Three out of every four Americans say Congress should not increase spending. That’s not 73 percent of the Tea Party, or 73 percent of the Republican Party. That’s 73 percent of all Americans who say Congress should not increase federal spending.

Republicans seem to have missed that message.

Since 2013, the GOP has consistently proposed budgets that increase spending, and not by just a little. Consider that the Republican budget for the 2014 fiscal year, offered by then-Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed $966 billion in base spending. This year, Speaker Ryan is pushing a budget that proposes $1.07 trillion.

That means in four years, Republicans have increased their proposal by $104 billion.

Of course, these issues are never really black and white, and there are lots of arguments that can (and will) be made about how the sequester, the filibuster, and the Democrats are to blame for this increase in federal spending.

But what is most troubling about the increased level of spending—it’s that these higher spending numbers are supported exclusively by Republicans, the party of fiscal discipline.

Consider that the president does not have to sign the budget resolution, and the filibuster does not apply to its consideration. Budget resolutions are strictly partisan affairs with almost no procedural constraints. The massive increases, therefore, cannot be blamed on anyone but the GOP.

This, by all accounts, is a shocking reality. Ryan, after all, has a prominent record of fiscal conservatism. So sterling is his reputation that 57 percent of the American people told pollsters they do not “expect House Speaker Paul Ryan and Congress to increase spending.”

Why, then, are the House Republicans pushing so hard to pass a budget at $1.07 trillion? For years, they have promised to be the party that reins in the federal debt and deficit, and yet they are proposing a $50 billion year-to-year increase in their own budget.

House Republicans have lost the forest for the trees.

Frustrated by Democrats and intimidated by a complicit media, the Republican leadership is looking for a way out of the conflict that invariably comes when one tries to exert fiscal discipline. Each budgeting document is seen as an exit ramp away from a public squabble with the Democrats rather than a path forward to responsible budgeting.

Around every budgeting corner, Republican leaders see a false choice between the Democrats’ shutdown narrative and an increase in spending. Instead of acting as visionary leaders, Republicans have reduced themselves to the party that incessantly searches for a clever solution to each Democratic trap. The cost is steep; the party of fiscal discipline is now producing budgets full of runaway federal spending.

As my colleague Paul Winfree and Heritage President Jim DeMint wrote recently, the budget is an opportunity for Republicans to present a vision to the country—one that is responsible, compassionate, and prudent in its priorities and spending. A budget that increases spending by $50 billion in one year is not that vision.

As conservatives, we must demand better. (For more from the author of “Republicans Are Addicted to Increasing Federal Spending” please click HERE)

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